


One More Really Good Try

by Quercusrobur



Series: Sun In My Sky [2]
Category: Doctor Who, Torchwood
Genre: Angst, Dark, Gen, Hurt No Comfort, Not kidding about the suicide, Post-Episode: s06e11 The God Complex, Suicide, Temporary Character Death - Jack Harkness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-05
Updated: 2019-07-05
Packaged: 2020-06-11 05:13:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,821
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19527175
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Quercusrobur/pseuds/Quercusrobur
Summary: The Doctor needs something to fix, and Jack needs fixing. He tried running, but it always catches up to him in the end.Prequel toFire the Crucible. Just a little more backstory. Don't read this if suicide and self-harm are triggers for you. Please.





	One More Really Good Try

**Author's Note:**

> _Set a few years after The God Complex for the Doctor, and fifty-ish years after CoE for Jack. They haven't seen each other since the Doctor set Jack up with Alonso. I have no intentions at this time of continuing this, but the how-we-met scene is relevant later._

This is definitely the right place; the unnatural distortion of time around Jack is impossible to mistake. Unmoving, hands still laid on the console, the Doctor is having serious second thoughts. Possibly third or fourth, or seventh. It's ridiculous to imagine Jack needing his interference; he is quite competent, can survive anything - _must_ survive anything - was a clever and well traveled person before the Doctor even met him. Perfectly able to fend for himself.

But there have been these glimpses. Alone and mourning in a bar far from Earth, still inexplicably taking orders from a man who could hardly bear to look at him. The increasingly unmistakable self-destructive scenes the Doctor has stumbled upon over the last day, his indecision taking him away immediately he sees Jack is otherwise occupied. At first a bloody battlefield, but it had been easy to tell himself Jack had a cause to fight for; no help needed. Just in case, though, the Doctor had checked back and found him taking on the terrifyingly risky business of free-climbing the sheer cliffs of Sifinux Minor; the eggs of the creatures that nest there are highly valued but he suspects Jack was after the danger and adrenaline instead. Trying out all the most dangerous jobs in Axelbend’s Almanac, perhaps; which notion had made the Doctor curious to see what would be next. He regrets that curiosity deeply now. He had found next a battered and bleeding Jack offering very unsafe sex for pay and the dead look in his eyes was too much even for the Doctor's well developed talent for coming up with excuses. Something would have to be done.

So he had left, because he didn't know what it was, and at heart… at heart he is still a coward.

But Jack is his responsibility. There are things he needs to set right before… well, before anything happens to him, and Jack is one of those things. So here he is, again, he doesn't even know where yet, but this time he will surely take some sort of action -

There is the sound of a key in the lock, and the doors are opening, and suddenly he has lost all choice in the matter.

“Where are you, you son of a bitch?” Jack stumbles in, drunk or ill or maybe poisoned, it's impossible to tell at first glance. He looks around wildly, but doesn't seem to see the Doctor, who is still standing unmoving at the console, staring at him in dismayed surprise. “Doctor! Get out here, you coward!” Which stings, close as it is to the Doctor's own thoughts on his recent activities.

Pulling himself up straight, he steps toward Jack, drawing his eye. It is still painfully uncomfortable to look at him, his fixed point a terrible stillness in what should never be still, time in all its endless dimensions and permutations breaking against him. But it is patently clear the Doctor has a responsibility to this man, nonetheless. “I'm here, Jack.”

Stopping suddenly, Jack catches himself on the railing. He peers at the Doctor, one side of his face crinkling up doubtfully. “Are you sure?”

Torn between amusement and frustration, the Doctor frowns half-heartedly. “Yes, Captain, I'm quite entirely sure.”

“Cute,” Jack says, and the Doctor can't tell if it's sarcasm. “Still a damned coward.”

“In some cases, unfortunately, yes. To which instance are you referring?”

“ _To which instance,_ ” Jack mocks, and the Doctor revises his understanding of the Captain's condition. Not drunk; ill or unbearably exhausted perhaps. He looks like he's remaining upright by willpower alone. “That _was_ you, on Halca. How many times have you run away? Help anyone who needs it, as long as it's not Jack, what are you stopping by for? Just to make sure I'm not committing genocide again? Killing kids?”

Holding his hand out placatingly, the Doctor says, “I don't know what's wrong, but I'm trying to help, lad -”

Jack punches him.

It isn't a very high quality punch, with the condition he’s in, but still it smarts badly. “Ow! What -”

“I'm two hundred and sixty years old, unless you want to count the time I spent _buried under Cardiff_ in which case I'm much older than you. You can take your _lad_ and shove it where the sun don't shine.” He looks simultaneously as though he is winding up for another punch and about to collapse, and the Doctor takes a wary step back.

“You didn't mind before.”

“I was thirty seven. Arse.” He narrows his eyes. “And _you_ didn't look fourteen.”

“Well, sorry, then! It wasn't that long ago for me.”

Jack just stares at him. “And I probably wouldn't have cared _what_ you called me as long as you let me stay. I was in love.”

For some reason the Doctor finds this, too, stings, and it prods him into a possibly ill-advised response. “Not anymore?”

With a baleful glare, Jack says, “Piss off,” tries to turn toward the doors, and falls unconscious to the floor. Reflexively reaching out, the Doctor succeeds in catching him only to the extent that he too is knocked down, landing hard on his knees.

He sighs. “I've had more successful days. I suppose it's a work in progress.”

-+-+-

His eyes are crusted shut. Jack is mildly displeased by this, but he doesn't want to see where he is anyway. He's been hallucinating lately, at least he thinks he has; it seems unlikely that Ianto would be waiting until he is nearly dead to show up. Repeatedly, on different worlds. But it's hard to remember that, and Jack wants to see him, so he keeps trying. It's not just that, of course. Maybe a failure of imagination, but Jack can't think what he should spend his time doing, forever, other than taking up spots on the death roster for the day. Everyone else, of course, will get one served up to them eventually. Just one. But it might as well be postponed. _I've got this_ , he thinks. Like bringing the car around in the rain. Everyone will get wet someday, but for today, Jack will handle it.

And those minutes where he can feel death settling her jaws around his head… it's the only time he feels anything anymore.

He has started hallucinating the Doctor recently as well. Where _that_ is coming from, he doesn't know. The Doctor isn't coming for him. He saw River again after he left Earth - really her, it was early on before things got so hazy - but she had no hope to offer, only very good distraction. His ghosts don't haunt him when she's around, which seems very sensible of them. But in the end he is always alone, and back they come.

On good days, lucky days, it’s Ianto. He sits down, arms wrapped around knees pulled up like he sat on Jack’s bed under the Hub, watches him as the light fades. Jack tries to reach for him but can never quite touch him. Sometimes it’s Tosh, or Owen, or Alex. Sometimes it’s much worse.

Sometimes it's piercing blue eyes above arms folded impatiently, frowning down at him. “Spend an awful lot of time lyin’ around,” he says, as Jack bleeds out at his feet. “Can't have you along if you can't keep up.”

Sometimes it's brown eyes staring impassively, long brown coat pushed out of the way by hands tucked into pockets. “Jack, Jack, Jack,” he says, shaking his head as Jack screams. “I won't have it with all this violence. There are better ways to solve problems. Couldn't you have, novel idea here I know, _talked_ to them?” _I tried that_ , Jack wants to say, _I tried to be you and it killed him_ , but instead he just screams until he can't anymore, and wonders if he will stay dead long enough to escape _this_ time.

When he started seeing a new Doctor he was mildly concerned, but couldn't feel much more than that. Simple extrapolation. Of course there is another one out there. This one never said anything at all, just looked at him with big, sad eyes and then ran away. Jack prefers the ones that stay, no matter what they say. No, not never - last time he talked, Jack thinks. He remembers the wrong voice calling him _lad_. Arsehole. Trying to crib off his own previous self. He could never measure up.

Jack considers moving. He has found that if he lies perfectly still, after a few minutes he can't feel anything at all; with his eyes closed in a quiet room, he can pretend he is dead. It doesn't ever last long. Eventually his heartbeat takes on a monstrous significance and he moves just to forget about it again, just to stop hearing the tick of that eternal clock. And he has never yet been able to will himself dead. He might never stop if he could, just wondering who will show up to insult him or watch him sadly or run away from him this time. But he can't call them, so he moves, tries to wet his dry mouth, clenches fingers in unexpected softness. _Fuck_ , he thinks, _some do-gooder with a rescue fetish again_.

A door opens softly, and a voice says, “Jack? Are you awake?”

Congratulating himself on rarely having been more correct in his life, Jack nonetheless gives willing himself dead one more _really_ good try.

-+-+-

Having Jack aboard the TARDIS is like having a spotlight shining in the corner of his eye all the time, even with Jack tucked away in bed asleep. By the second day the Doctor has a headache that feels permanently entrenched. The TARDIS is uncomfortable too, trying to contain the uncontainable, but unlike him she seems to be adjusting to carrying Jack's _now_ and letting his eternity spill out the edges.

“I wouldn't keep him if it hurt you, old girl,” the Doctor reassures her, patting the console fondly. But she wants to keep him, and the Doctor wants to put things right, even if that is looking more complicated than he had hoped. “We'll get it all sorted. I'll get used to it eventually.”

But Jack keeps sleeping, and the Doctor keeps fighting the headache; not to mention the disorientating feeling of time-blindness that washes over him whenever he makes the mistake of looking directly at the fixed point, that strange stillness that should never be. He does his best to ignore it, going about his days inside the TARDIS and, increasingly, outside, just to get away from that constant glare. The Doctor is investigating a rather ingenious rope-and-pulley based camouflage system in a seventh century European valley after sending the misplaced resident back home when the TARDIS notifies him that Jack has awoken. It is the eighth day since he fell unconscious.

There is no sound from Jack's room, no movement; the Doctor carefully opens the door and looks in. “Jack? Are you awake?” Evidence suggests that nothing the Doctor does will wake him before he's ready, but still he is quiet.

Jack opens his eyes and blinks them clear. His head turns like a rusted weathervane and he laughs, dry and rasping; the Doctor recoils at the sound. “Put me back, Doctor. Put me back and run away.”

Frowning, the Doctor steps into the room. It is not quite as it was when he brought Jack here; the TARDIS responding to the wishes of her occupants again. Every personal touch, everything left from the months he lived here so long ago, is gone. The walls are bare, the wardrobe plain, the narrow bed in the middle of the room; so, the Doctor suspects, Jack doesn't start out with his back against the wall. Leave them a little room for negotiation. “I certainly will not. Look at you, Jack, you're in no state to be alone.”

“Look at me, Doctor,” Jack repeats mockingly as he pushes himself upright. “I'm in no state to be kept.” His eyes are sunken, skin stretched taut over sharp cheekbones, hair a wild mess, plastered flat on one side with substances the Doctor won’t guess at. He is still beautiful, but it is a harsh, painful sort of beauty, and all the Doctor knows to do with him is what he does with any broken thing: tinker with it until it's fixed.

“Bath,” he decides. “A bath will help.” He goes to draw a bath with Jack's mocking voice in his ears, and returns, and helps Jack into it, bearing the pain of his touch stoically.

“You finally fucked up so bad you couldn't stand it, is that it? You needed something to make you feel better about yourself so you came here to play saviour, the good Doctor off to right the _wrong?_ ” It is hitting uncomfortably close to home and how does he even _do_ that when he hasn't seen the Doctor in who knows how long? The Doctor backs away, leaves him to his bath, but Jack's voice follows him. “I have _news for you,_ Doctor, I can't be _righted!_ ”

When that blinding glare goes out the Doctor is too absorbed in his book to really notice. He relaxes back into the sofa a bit more, stretches his neck, welcomes the relief from that infernal headache without thinking. When it blazes back to life he nearly drops his book in shock. No matter his discomfort; it shouldn’t have gone _out!_ The TARDIS is worried but not urgent, and the Doctor sets his book down and makes his way quickly back to Jack's room.

Still in the bath, Jack looks unexpectedly relaxed; arms draped over the sides, he has one foot propped up, stopper dangling from his toes as he watches it spin. The last of the pinkish water drains away as the Doctor enters the bathroom. Smiling as he meets the Doctor's eyes, he raises a hand and produces a razor blade with a flourish. “You sure you're ready for this?”

He's not. He's not at all.

-+-+-

The Doctor takes away the razor blades, and Jack drowns himself. The Doctor takes away the bathtub, and Jack hangs himself from the showerhead. The Doctor has the TARDIS recess it into the wall, and Jack considers breaking the mirror or drowning himself in the toilet or maybe just slipping and seeing if he can hit his head just right, but decides to save those for after he has exhausted the low-hanging fruit.

The kitchen is fun, until the Doctor makes the entire room off-limits. Jack tries dehydration; the Doctor thinks he’s given up and is desperately relieved. It takes his quickly healing body much too long to reach the restful state of renal failure, though, and he gets bored and breaks his mirror for a sharp edge. Nothing in it he wants to see, anyway. When Jack revives after that one he almost feels something at the look on the Doctor’s face; he almost feels sorry, almost feels regret. He’d take that. He’d take any feeling. He wishes sometimes he could hate the Doctor anymore, because he thinks that’s what started all this, but he can’t remember. He hangs himself with his bedsheets, instead.

The TARDIS won’t let him go anywhere dangerous. She gives him the library, so he climbs the stacks and jumps. It takes a few increasingly dizzy tries to get the angle right. She gives him gardens with nothing to climb and no water to drown himself in, so he eats the plants. That ends up being lingering and uncomfortable and he feels it, alright. It’s not what he wants to feel.

After that he goes to the infirmary where he can only find one hypospray that seems at all likely. That might seem odd if he were in any state to care, but he isn’t so he uses it. It is painless, which is briefly disappointing.

When he revives he has been hauled up onto a bed, still in the infirmary. The Doctor is sitting next to him, just looking up from his book as Jack turns his head to look at him. “I’m done being reactive,” the Doctor says, and Jack doesn’t understand until he tries to move. He can’t; wrists and ankles, thighs and chest, straps hold him down. “You can’t go on like this.”

“Yes,” Jack says. “In fact. I can. I will. However, whenever, whatever happens, _I go on_.”

“Why are you doing this, Jack? What happened?”

“Fuck you.”

The Doctor grins and Jack wants to punch him. “If you ever managed that you wouldn’t be killing yourself over it.” Smug, insufferable bastard. Jack doesn’t reply and the Doctor stops grinning. “Would you still do it, if - if you would stay dead?”

“In a heartbeat,” Jack says, and the Doctor flinches.

“Well it doesn’t work, and I’m tired of it. I came here to help, Jack, and I’m going to.”

It is a long time before Jack stops fighting.

-+-+-+-


End file.
